I know your pain. I had the same problem in 2013.

Everyone said it was a horrible time to buy a house, "The rates/prices are too high, wait a bit" but I also couldn't afford to get an apartment that wasn't a roach motel for less than $1k per month, so I bought a house anyways. Now I'm laughing with my $750 USD mortgage while the idiots who kept telling me it was a horrid time to buy a house are bitching about their apartment leases that keep going up each year and paying out 1.5k to 2k per month in rent.

Renting really only makes sense if you know you are going to be moving a good distance frequently over the next several years. If you have a steady job you are planning on staying at for a while, better to buy. You can always rent it out if life changes your plans for you.

Set a time frame by which you want to move in, and a budget roughly 2 times but not more than 4 times your annual gross income and see what you can find for that in that time frame.

When my wife and I bought our house I was making roughly $50k a year, so we were looking at the $100k-$150k price point but wound up finding our home at $90K. Not a palace by any stretch and it needed a new roof, but it's been a great house. Basing our budget off just my income and aiming for the lower side of 2-4x income has allowed us to stay in our home even when me or my wife was out of work for a bit.

Look and see if there are any programs for first time home buyers in your area also. I forget exactly what program we qualified for but we were able to get our mortgage for $0 down at the added expense of mortgage insurance. It cost me more per month (and over all) than it would have if I had had the traditional 20% down but TANSTAFL.

Make sure you get a fixed rate mortgage though and not an adjustable rate one. I've a sneaking suspicion that rates may wind up going back up in a few years and such a roller coaster has cost more than one person I know their home.